Last week, eight Chinese-made light attack jets sat on a half-finished runway at Ban Keun, flanked by more than two dozen military support vehicles, offering the first aerial glimpse of a new Chinese-Lao military facility north of the Lao capital, Vientiane. The speed of the buildup and the earthmoving visible around the airstrip in the […]

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Southeast Asia’s growth next year will be decided at meetings its finance ministers won’t attend. A few executives in California will soon settle next year’s spending on data centers. Their decisions will do more to shape growth in Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines than any budget those governments pass. The World Bank has just […]

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It is fitting that DreamWorks’ “Forgotten Island” carries a title that evokes memory and loss. The film, released globally in September, is on the surface a coming-of-age adventure about friendship. Look a little closer and it is a poignant meditation on separation – a theme that speaks deeply to the Philippines and its diaspora, whose […]

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Thousands gathered at Baiturrahman Grand Mosque in Banda Aceh on August 15, 2026, to commemorate 21 years of peace between Indonesia and the separatist Free Aceh Movement, or GAM. Some participants raised GAM’s red, black and white crescent-star flag and chanted “Free Aceh,” while others lowered Indonesia’s national flag and replaced it with the former […]

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Adam Castillo, a former president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Myanmar who had lobbied for sanctions relief in exchange for US, was released in recent days after spending over three months in detention. In the same week, Time magazine’s Charlie Campbell sat down with Senior General Min Aung Hlaing in Naypyitaw. The coup […]

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